


A Very Anderlock Christmas

by NegativEvitageN



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anderlock, Christmas, Crack Pairings, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NegativEvitageN/pseuds/NegativEvitageN
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock insults everyone at the New Scotland Yard Christmas party, they decide on the perfect payback, and somehow Sherlock finds himself under the mistletoe with his worst enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Anderlock Christmas

“Kiss~him! Kiss~him! Kiss~him!” everyone on the floor chants goadingly. 

Anderson lets out a long suffering groan, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling and praying to whomever or whatever the heck is up there to get him out of this situation. He has never felt so betrayed by his colleagues.

“Let’s just get this over with and move on with our lives,” he grumbles, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides, slightly ruffling his faded, plain black suit.

“If you think I’m going to kiss you-“ Sherlock starts, warningly, voice low. He takes off his scarf and stuffs it in his coat’s pocket.

“I wasn’t the one that got us in this situation in the first place, was I!” Anderson interrupts, face heated in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Right about now, he was wishing he still had his drink to gulp down, but had lost it to the room some time back. In fact, he had been on his way to get another when he had met Sherlock under the doorframe and this whole mess started.

“Well if you had stayed on the other side of the room and hadn’t come anywhere near me, then we wouldn’t have been under the mistletoe at the same time!” Sherlock accuses, averting his gaze to a nearby window, probably wishing as much as Anderson was that this whole situation wasn’t happening.

Anderson lets out a harsh laugh. There is no way he was trying to blame this on him.

“You shouldn’t even be here anyways! This is a New Scotland Yard party. _You_ are not part of New Scotland Yard.”

“I’m a consulting detective,” Sherlock sneers.

“More like Insulting Detective,” Anderson grumbles back.

“Oh yes, very clever,” Sherlock rolls his eyes.

“And if you hadn’t insulted everyone in this room, they would’ve let the fact that we’re under the mistletoe slide and wouldn’t be forcing us into this at the moment!” Anderson counters, scanning the crowd for someone who can help. His eyes meet Sally’s across the room who is standing on the edge of the crowd sniggering unhelpfully. The pale, amber drink in her hand matches the color of her dress.

“What do you mean I insulted everyone??” Sherlock asks incredulously. As if he didn’t know.

“For God’s sake, Sherlock, you pointed out the fact that Sally got a new cat and then proceeded to pretty much call her the equivalent of a lonely old cat lady-“

“I just said that now that she’s started, she was statistically likely to increase the number of cats she owned every year of her life unless she was able to find a man willing to stick with her!”

“-You repetitively told Erickson that if he didn’t lose weight he was very likely to die early from coronary artery disease-“

“Well that’s true isn’t it! He’s at risk with that much weight! I was just giving him some healthy advice!”

“-You made Walker cry by your harsh criticism of her outfit, calling it something along the line of ‘desperate and pathetic’-“

“I never said that! I was simply informing her that her outfit was a desperate cry for sex and that she was more likely to pick someone up if she wasn’t trying so hard.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, do you even hear yourself? How can you imagine those things are ok??”

“Quit stalling and just kiss each other already!” someone from the crowd shouts, sounding suspiciously like none other than Lestrade. God, he was probably filming this wasn’t he? Anderson’s eyes dart towards the voice, but he can’t quite spot the DI.

Sherlock shoots an ungrateful look at the crowd, looking more embarrassed than Anderson has ever seen him, and of course Anderson doesn’t fail to take the opportunity to revel in his discomfort. About time he was the one looking like the fool.

Sherlock looks back at him, a very serious look glaring down Anderson’s smirk, and he lowers his voice so that no one else can hear, “I don’t want to kiss you like this.”

“Well, yeah, I don’t want to kiss you either, but if we don’t-“ Anderson starts, gesturing to the crowd as if that’s enough of an explanation.

“No. You misunderstand,” Sherlock groans, making Anderson feel idiotic yet again just with the tone of his voice (God, he hated when he did that.) “I don’t want to kiss you _like this._ ”

Anderson’s eyebrows knit together and he shakes his head at him, not getting the meaning of what Sherlock was saying, “The heck do you mean? ‘Like this’.”

Sherlock runs a hand down his face, groaning at the idiocy and Anderson scowls back at him.

“I mean I’m not going to kiss you just because we’re standing under the mistletoe and everyone else wants me to. It’s just a stupid tradition of a stupid holiday that I don’t celebrate anyways,” Sherlock rants, practically spitting out the words. He must truly be embarrassed if this is the vocabulary he’s choosing to use. Usually he sounds smarter than this (or maybe that’s just Anderson’s imagination).

“Well then walk away! I’m pretty sure no one can stop you. If it’s really such an incredibly horrible thought to kiss me, then just leave and save me the embarrassment!”

“If it’s such an embarrassing thought to kiss me, then why haven’t _you_ walked away yet?” Sherlock counters.

And at the same time both men come to a very curious realization.

Anderson pauses struck dumbfounded by this new epiphany.

“What? Do you, like, want to kiss me or something?”

“Oh don’t be tedious, Anderson. Of course I don’t want to kiss you. I wouldn’t want to catch your stupidity.”

Sherlock crosses his arms across his chest and shoots a look out the window again, and Anderson thinks he can see just a hint of some sort of blush. Sherlock has put up a cool façade, but it isn’t very convincing and Anderson can see right through it.

“Then why haven’t you walked away?” Anderson presses, ignoring the affront.

“Anderson, if you were twice as smart, you’d still be stupid.”

“A hasty insult. Not your best. That wasn’t an explanation. Nor an actual denial.”

Sherlock huffs.

“If I walk away now I’d never be taken seriously by your colleagues.”

“Well, you’re not taken seriously here anyways, so why does it matter? And you’re not going to be taken seriously by kissing me either, so that’s not the actual reason. What is it?”

“Anderson, shut up.”

“Oh don’t tell me you actually _want_ to kiss me.”

“Oh my god. Just kiss him already!” someone from the crowd shouts impatiently.

“I do but not like this!” Sherlock grumbles under his breath.

“Wait what?”

“I don’t want to kiss you in front of everyone and only because I’m forced into it.”

“Did you just admit to wanting to kiss me?”

“And I don’t want to kiss you simply because we’re both under the mistletoe.”

“You totally just said you wanted to kiss me.”

“And I definitely don’t want to kiss you as an act of revenge from the rest of your coworkers.”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock stops ranting and stares at him.

“If you don’t kiss me, then I’m going to kiss you because I really have no way out of this. I just figured, knowing you, you’d want the lead on this thing.”

Sherlock glances at the crowd. Nearly everyone had their mobile out, prepared to film. Great.

The “Kiss~him! Kiss~him!” chant has resumed, coupled with a cacophony of other random shouts. The crowd was getting raucous.

“I’m never going to bring this up again,” Anderson continues, sounding surprisingly sincere even by his own standards, “And I’m pretty sure everyone else will get bored of it eventually, so if they do mock you, it won’t be for long. And I’ll get the blunt end of that stick anyways, seeing as I’ll have to see them every day until they finally let it go. You have the option of just avoiding them. I don’t. You have nothing to worry about. So let’s just get this over with and move on.”

“You’re never going to bring it up again?” Sherlock laughs, not believing him.

“I wouldn’t mock you for something like this,” Anderson replies, completely serious. True, they had picked up a banter of insults as normal conversation, but this wasn’t something he was willing to include on that list, “Especially not for something we both want.”

“What do you mean ‘we both want’?”

“Well, I’ll go ahead and admit it because I’m obviously the better man here,” (Sherlock sneers at him), “The thought of kissing you isn’t entirely horrible.”

Sherlock raises a condescending eyebrow at him, and Anderson only momentarily regrets what he’s just said. The crowd is getting louder again, some of them having picked up the obnoxious act of mock kissing, smacking their lips together with a taunting ‘Mwah, mwah, mwah!’

“I never said I wanted this,” Sherlock continues, his arguments getting weaker.

“You didn’t need to.”

Sherlock frowns, obviously not believing Anderson in any way or form. Which, of course, was only the smart thing to do given their history. Anderson, likewise, didn’t trust Sherlock as far as he could throw him, and still wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t some elaborate setup by the ‘Consulting Detective’ to make him look like a fool. But he needed to put that mistrust aside just long enough so that he could through this.

Sherlock sighs heavily, glances from Anderson to the crowd and back again, determines that, ok no there isn’t really an escape from this, and looks to the hollering crowd and yells, “Alright, fine!”

A single shout of glee and the crowd falls completely silent, watching expectantly, grinning like a bunch of idiots. Phones, digital cameras, one actual expensive video recorder, all armed and ready to capture the event. Anderson can’t help but feel a bit dizzy, all of this just a bit too surreal, as if it was a dream. He almost feels like he’s an actor about to film a scene with the way that everyone is watching him.

Sherlock turns back to Anderson and huffs a sigh. Anderson braces himself, forcibly fighting the urge to run away now that everyone’s eyes were on him and they were actually about to do this.

They both awkwardly move forward, hesitate, hover, trying to figure out how to do this. The crowd giggles. Both men blush.

Anderson, his train of thought going something along the line of ‘Oh, screw it,’ grabs Sherlock’s coat and pulls him in.

Their first attempt is a bit ridiculous, noses crashing into each other, lips not quite lined up, both men absurdly tense, Sherlock’s arms hovering caught in midair. The crowd laughs.

But they immediately adjust to a better position, Sherlock moves into the kiss and puts his hands on Anderson’s hips, and they hit it right on the mark with the second attempt.

The crowd erupts in howls and caterwauls, whistles and laughs. Flashes of cameras. Jeers. One particular DI filming the entire thing to later put on his blog.

The bastard.

Anderson mentally counts in his head the full five seconds that they are mandatorily supposed to stay kissing. And then one second after that. And another second. Another more.

Neither man is pulling away.

Anderson really can’t remember at what point he decided to close his eyes, but now, eyes closed, lips together, he takes just a moment to revel in the sensation.

It isn’t until Anderson’s mental clock ticks away ten seconds that someone comes up and slaps a joyous pat on his back, pulling him away and jostling him around playfully. They ruffle his hair. They say things along the lines of “Thanks for taking one for the team!” “I can’t believe you actually kissed him! That was amazing!” and “I bet you’re never going to forget that, are you!” 

Anderson and Sherlock share a fleeting glance before they walk him away from the doorframe to rejoin his group on the other side of the room.

Sally greets him with a smile and an eyebrow wiggle.

“I got a picture,” she says cheekily with a wink, presenting her mobile for Anderson to see. Anderson glances towards the doorframe again as he takes it, but can’t quite catch a glimpse of anyone there, then turns his attention back to the phone.

It isn’t a very good photograph. Too far away, slightly unfocused, and the lighting is just horrendous. But even then, Anderson can see himself in the picture.

And he can see that he’s smiling into the kiss.

Shit. They were never going to let him live that down, he just knew it. He would become the laughing stock of Scotland Yard. The man who enjoys kissing his enemy. Great.

“Oh, that’s lovely, Sally,” Anderson replies weakly, handing the phone back and glancing to where Sherlock had stood moments before. He’s disappeared.

“This is going on every social media site I know. Everyone is going to see this!” Sally continues, not noticing the fact that she’s lost Anderson’s attention.

Sherlock had disappeared, and even though Anderson had made it his life’s mission to give him hell at every waking chance, he honestly felt bad for the guy. Probably wasn’t going to see him around for a while if he was really that embarrassed. New Scotland Yard finally got its pest-be-gone wish, it seems.

Well, Anderson is thinking this of course, until Sherlock pops up next to him seemingly out of nowhere and tosses him something.

Startled, he catches it out of reflex and it isn’t until it’s firmly in his hands that he realizes what it is:

A container of mint flavoured tic-tacs.

“In case you were wanting to kiss anyone else tonight, might wanna check out that breath!” Sherlock smirks at him before walking away smugly. A few of his colleagues catch the insult and try to stifle their cackles.

Anderson’s face flushes with anger. “Yeah, well you should’ve taken some, too! You’re breath aint exactly a bouquet of flowers!” he calls after the detective. His colleagues burst out laughing.

Sherlock only smirks, catching his gaze for a moment before exiting the room.

Ah, so they were back to the insulting banter, eh? Good. That’s how it should be.


End file.
